“ ... Egyptian airliner crashed into the sea shortly after taking off from Kennedy airport, killing all 217 people on board ... ”
Instant death.
The radio was set to his aunt's gloom-and-doom station.
He twisted the dial to a music station and started work, trying not to think of 217 people in an airliner vanished from the face of the earth, all dying in the same instant.
On Monday Sarah didn't come again. Margaret Cowley had probably assigned her to a different job; or her classroom teacher had put her foot down, insisting she attend class; or she didn't like the archives and had refused a second day working in the dust; or she simply didn't like him. No problem; he didn't need a girl anyway. He would ask Miss Pringle for help if he needed materials off the upper shelves.
He worked and listened to his radio.
Later that evening as they were slurping their milkshakes in the Dairy Queen, Robbie wanted to know what the eighth grader was like.
“She was just a kid,” said Mike. “Nothing special. She came once and hasn't been back.”
“You probably scared the spaghetti out of her.”
“What are you saying, Robbie? Cripples are scary?”
Robbie recoiled from his friend's sudden anger. “Take it easy, Mike. I wasn't saying anything of the sort. You know me better than that.”
“Sorry, Robbie. I don't know what's the matter with me.”
“What's her name?”
“Look â the kid only came the once. I told you: she quit already.”
“But you remember her name, right?”
“I told you. Sarah.”
“Sarah what?”
“She didn't say. People do that, just tell their first names. Anyway, it doesn't matter. She didn't like the job, I guess. No big deal. You know how girls are: they hate to get dirty.”
“Was she big, small, medium, good-looking, ugly, what?”
Mike said, “I didn't really notice. Small, I think. All the eights are midgets.”
“No way,” said Robbie. “These days? Eighth graders come in all sizes.”
They finished their shakes and Robbie ordered his usual bag of fries chaser.
He was surprised when Sarah showed up on Tuesday. She was more subdued, less talkative, seeming to sense his desire for silence and solitude. He felt more depressed than usual; he didn't know why. Life was a drag. You had only to look around. Innocent people were killed by stupid, irresponsible, not-.t-to-live drunks; many people had nothing, while others had everything; or they died young, in wars or in airplanes falling from the sky, like that Egyptian plane the other day; or they died from starvation or terrible diseases, while others lived to be eighty or ninety or a hundred without ever being sick or missing a meal their entire lives. Life was senseless and unfair: life was the pits.
Sarah worked quietly, not bothering him, tidying the
Clarions
, returning loose copies to their proper
bundles, retying and restacking, moving about soundlessly as though in a sick room.
She didn't even say goodbye; just before the bell he looked over at the other side of the dimly lit room and she wasn't there, had escaped a few minutes early, no doubt, to gossip with her locker partner or do herself up in the washroom mirror.
She was several minutes late on Wednesday. Girls spent a lot of time in washrooms, he knew that, or they chattered and giggled together at their lockers long after the bell had gone. “Thought you'd decided to take a day off,” he grumbled.
She smiled, but said nothing and sat in her usual place at the table with her denim tote bag and took out a sketch pad and pencil box. “Do you need anything from the shelves, Michael?”
He shook his head and turned the radio up.
After a while she said, “Michael, could we have the radio off so we can talk a little while we work?”
“There's nothing to talk about. Besides, I need to concentrate.”
“There's plenty to talk about; for instance...”
He turned the radio up some more.
She reached over, grabbed it, turned it off and put it beside her on the floor, smiling at him cheekily across the table. She had nice teeth, small and white and even.
He narrowed his eyes at her threateningly. He hadn't really wanted the music so loud anyway, and if truth be told didn't mind the silence, but he wasn't about to let her know that. “Look, kid! You better put â ”
“Michael, be nice. Here, have some of my Snickers bar.” She broke her chocolate bar in half and proffered the package.
He took it. Chocolate was hard to resist.
She began to sketch.
“You're supposed to be helping me.”
“I
am
helping you, Michael.”
“No. you're not. You're just having yourself a good time.”
“What would you like me to do?”
“Well, you could help by looking through these newspapers and searching for interesting stories.”
“I'd love to search for interesting stories.”
“Slap a Post-It on anything you find. No reports on school dances â unless something unusual happens, like a .re or a fight, or problems with liquor; and no sports or athletics, unless school or district records are broken, or something unusual happens, okay?”
They settled down to work. After a while, Sarah started to hum. He waited for her to stop, but she kept it up. “You're humming,” he told her.
“No, I'm not.”
“You
were
.” He knew how sneaky girls could be with verb tenses. He'd been caught before, with Becky.
“Wasn't.”
“You were. You were humming.”
“Wasn't.”
“Was.”
“That should be
were.
”
“What were you humming?”
“Beethoven.”
“There, you see. You admit it!”
“No, I don't.”
He sighed and tried to ignore her.
On Thursday the librarian said, “I've left the door open for you, Mike.” Miss Pringle had found a way to help without being pushy. “If you need material from the high shelves I can have one of the library students get it for you.”
He didn't thank her as he wheeled past the checkout counter, turned right at Myths & Folklore and headed down to Classics. A left turn, a right and another left brought him to Archives. He pulled the door closed behind him.
“Hello, Michael.”
She was already there, sitting at the table with paper, crayons and glue, making colored labels for the newspaper shelves.
She looked slightly different, but he couldn't see exÂactly why. Probably her hair: girls were always fooling around and doing different things with their hair.
She stopped what she was doing and moved to the stool, where she perched, chin cupped between her hands, big happy smile, elbows on knees, feet on the rung of the stool, saying nothing. She was eviÂdently waiting for him to acknowledge her, to greet her, to say something nice about her colored labels perhaps.
But he only mumbled in his gruff voice, scowling, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of noticing she was on time.
She held something up for him to see. “Look, I brought my paint box.”
He wheeled past her to the table. “You can put these newspapers back on the shelf. I've finished with them.”
“Don't be such an old grouch, Michael. It's no use pretending you're not glad to see me because I know you are.” She slid off the stool.
He watched her: thin, straight back, tumble of abundant dark hair to her shoulders. It was a different style, he was almost certain of it; girls did tricky things with wigs and hairpieces these days, made themselves appear to have more hair than they actually had. She was gluing her new labels to the shelves. They looked good. Nobody would have any trouble in the future looking for specific years.
And the room seemed different today, warmer and brighter, pushing the shadows back, burnishing the mahogany of the table, bathing the bundles of old newsprint in a bronze glow.
“How do you like it?” She stood back, admiring her work.
“It's fine.”
She smiled. “Is that all you can say? âIt's fine'?” â mocking his grumpy tone â “I pour my artistic talents into making this place bright and cheerful and organized and all you can â ”
“All right! It's great. How's that?”
“âGreat' is better. Thank you.”
Remembering Robbie, he said, “What's your last name anyway?”
She stepped down off the chair. “Francis. Sarah Francis. My mother's name before she married my father was Frances Finkleheimer, but now it's Frances Francis. Don't you think that's neat?” Without waiting for an answer she said, “I brought my paint box so I can paint you. I'm quite a good painter. You can sit for me.”
“I don't want to âsit' for you.”
She pulled a face. “What a sourpuss. I hope I'm
not like you when I get to be a senior.” She sighed. “Let's not work today, Michael, okay? Look, I know a good game. I love movies â don't you just love movies? â except I don't get to go too often because of piano practice every day, early in the morning and then again later, in the afternoon, but I don't mind, not really, I love the piano. The game is you pretend to be someone famous, like a movie star and I ask you questions and try to guess who you are, okay?”
“Look, kid...”
“Sarah.”
“I don't have time for games. There's a deadline. The yearbook committee is breathing down my neck. I've got to have this project finished for soon after Christmas. My history teacher wants a Carleton fiftieth anniversary research essay handed in as an assignment for his stupid course, get the picture?”
“Could we talk, then, just for a little while, and then you can work?”
Kids were a pain, especially girl kids; all they ever
did
was talk. His scowl didn't even slow her down.
“I want to ask you about fate. Do you believe in fate, Michael? Like two people meant to be together? Like Paris and Helen of Troy? Or Romeo and Juliet? I do.” She opened her eyes wide and stared into his. She put on a deep, husky voice, probably copying some screen actress. “You're very good-looking, you know.”
He blushed. “Cut it out!”
She laughed. “But you are, Michael. You look like Harrison Ford. So stern and serious and cute. Did you see him in
Raiders of the Lost Ark?
He was so cool. I just loved him.”
Before he could tell her to shut up so he could work, she said, “I saw it twice, the first time with my mom and dad and the second time with Jennifer Galt, my best friend.” She was silent for a moment, thinking. Then she said, “Michael, if I grow up as fast as I can, will you promise to wait for me?”
“Huh?”
“So we can graduate together.”
“Oh, sure. I'll wait for you,” he growled sarcastically, looking down at his legs. “I won't be going anyplace.”
She touched the places below his knees, the stumps. “Can you feel it when I touch you there?” She was serious now.
“Yes, of course I can.”
“Do you miss the feelings you used to get in your legs?”
“Sometimes it feels like they're still there, and I look, expecting to see them. I get shin pains. And sometimes I can wiggle my toes.”
“But that's impossible!”
“It's called phantom limbs. Sometimes my brain thinks they're still there.”
“Do you feel phantom limbs now?”
“No, only sometimes.”
She trailed away from him to sit on the edge of the table, legs dangling, head tilted, face pale and suddenly melancholy. She opened her paint box, picked out a brush and ran a fingertip and thumb over its bristles. “How did it happen? The accident. Was that when you lost your parents and became an orphan?”
The sun inserted a beam through the narrow window. Blue dust motes swam in the air above Sarah's head as he thought back to last year when they had been driving home from the Abbotsford Air Show. They were all tired. Becky was overtired â overÂexcited, his father had said. His mom called Becky a tomboy because she was sometimes wild, and she loved airplanes as much as Mike. Becky always argued with her mother, saying, “Calling someone a tomboy is so stupid, I'm just a girl.” For both Mike and Becky the highlight of the air show had been sitting in the cockpit of a Spitfire. For their father, an ex-navy pilot, it had been the helicopters.
“We were on our way home in the car,” he said simply. “A drunk driver hit us head on.”
Why was he telling this to a kid? Because sometimes Sarah didn't seem like a kid, that was why; sometimes she seemed quite grown up.
“It was just over a year ago. My parents and my kid sister were ... they were wiped out ... killed. I was sitting in the back seat with my sister. I had my seat belt on. She didn't. But I was trapped, couldn't move. I don't remember much of it. It took a long time, but they got me out; my legs were crushed, below the knees.” He shrugged. “That's it.”
That was it: a short, simple story. What he didn't tell her was how the simple story, the part he did remember, the part he'd never forget, played and replayed itself in his head most nights before he went to sleep. In detail. With sound effects. Saturday afternoon, middle of August, Dad driving west, sun visor down against the late afternoon brightness, car
radio playing some of Mom's favorite music, live every Saturday from New York, that week an opera called
Aïda
â he even remembered the title â Mom with her head back, eyes closed, Becky â still high from an exciting day â giggling, unruly as usual, mimicking the soprano, showing off for Mike's benefit. “Becky!” Mom's testy voice the last thing he heard before the blackness.
Robbie missed being killed. He had arranged to go with them, but canceled out at the last minute, calling early on Saturday morning to say his mother wasn't well; Mrs. Palladin had been up most of the night with pains in her head and stomach, and he was going to stay home and make sure she was okay.